Hero Killer / Western Animation

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• The Lich from Adventure Time. In the fourth season finale, he kills Billy and takes his skin, then uses it to trick Finn into helping him.
• Batman: The Animated Series has the episode "The Man Who Killed Batman", in which a random lowly goon of Rupert Thorne's mafia named Sid "The Squid" Debris apparently managed to kill the Dark Knight himself. This trope then gets deconstructed because Sid killed Batman by accident and he's too much of a weakling to deal with the horrors that his new rep tosses at him.
• Vilgax from Ben 10. Word of God is that his atrocities include destroying 4 planets and creating a black hole, and the dialogue in the series indicates that everyone is scared to death of him. When he first starts to act at the end of the 1st season, Ben's Old Soldier grandpa tells him to run when he sees him, some advice he should have taken as Vilgax promptly stomps him. When he makes a return in Ben 10: Alien Force, though for reason acting under rules of Galactic Conduct, these rules mean he gets to fight some champions from a planet and if he wins, the planet is his. Till returning to Earth, he never lost.
• Olrox from Castlevania: Nocturne. He holds the acclaim of being the only known Vampire (in the Netflix continuity) to successfully kill a Belmont (Richter Belmont's mother, Julia), albeit it was not out of a need to prove his power but a simple token of Revenge for killing his beloved.
• Kilobot from Cubix: Robots for Everyone spends his time feeding on the energy of other robots and copying their EPUs as ordered by Dr. K, growing stronger with each energy he feeds on and each EPU he copies. He eventually grows so powerful that Robixcorb decides that a stronger Cubix is the only hope to save Bubbletown from such a dangerous threat. Even so, in the second-to-last episode, Kilobot ACTUALLY manages to destroy Cubix at the end. Of course, it was just a temporary destruction, and Cubix pulled himself back together afterwards, and even then he needs to recruit help from Dr. K. and Kolossal to defeat this creep for good.
• Dungeons & Dragons (1983) had a one-shot villain, the Evil-With-No-Name, in the episode "The Dungeon At The Heart Of Dawn." A being so powerful even The Dungeon Master and resident Big Bad Venger couldn't handle him, who could soar the cosmos and return to plague the realm at any time he chose, who could only be fought...maybe...with All Your Powers Combined? The fact that he only appeared that one episode is a shame.
• El Tigre: The episode "Yellow Pantera" introduces the giant green supervillain El Mal Verde who is nearly unstoppable, a team of three superheroes tried to stop him, only to be devoured by him onscreen, said superheroes' remains would later be see in the episode.
• Final Space: The Lord Commander is one of the most powerful beings in existence,^note  Not counting The Titans with most people standing no chance against him. Only Mooncake has been shown to have enough power to temporarily stop him so far. In episode 6 he uses his psychic powers to plant a bomb on Little Cato, forcing Avocato to sacrifice his life to save his son. According to Nightfall, in hundreds of past timelines, the Lord Commander has always succeeded in murdering Gary.
• Toonami's first event, The Intruder sees the titular villain kill TOM's original body. Its sequel, The Intruder II sees the creature return and has the creature kill SARA, then gloat about killing TOM 4 offscreen. However, SARA — much like TOM 1-3.5/5 — doesn't stay dead.
• The Legend of Korra:
  • Amon, though his most important quarry isn't always needed to be killed. Immediately, at least.
    "I told you I would destroy you."
  • The Red Lotus is Book 3. They can wipe the floor with the White Lotus, and any bender who stands against them is as good as dead or captured. And being Bomb-Throwing Anarchists, the world as a whole doesn't stand that much more of a chance against them. They also manage to basically kill the Avatar, but Suyin saves Korra at the last possible second from the metallic poison, much like Katara did Aang.
    "Do you have any idea the power that these criminals possess? Individually, they can take down any bender. Put them all together, they can take down the entire world."
• The Skullmaster from Mighty Max. In the series backstory he successfully conquered the Earth, and Max's predecessor couldn't beat him and was only able to seal him in the center of the Earth. Most of the appearances he makes have the heroes doing some running from him. In the finale he kills both the supporting heroes, and the best Max could do in a direct confrontation was cause a Gainax Ending.
• Grogar from My Little Pony 'n Friends gets as close as this show would allow to this trope, as he more or less spends the entire special walking through everything the heroes throw at him and manages to basically conquer Ponyland within minutes of showing up. While he doesn't actually kill anyone, he certainly comes very close to doing so, nearly banishing everyone to the Realm of Shadows and raining bolts of lightning with intent to kill down on the heroes during the climax. It takes exploiting his Kryptonite Factor to finally beat him, and he does not make it easy.
• Strike from the Crisis Crossover episode of Ok KO Lets Be Heroes is a villain that has been summoning protagonists from different Cartoon Network shows in order to turn them into stone. It's up to K.O., Garnet, Ben Tennyson and Raven to stop him.
• Samurai Jack:
  • Aku has defeated all would-be heroes who would try to end his reign of terror. This is in part because Jack's sword is one of the only weapons that can actually hurt him, so only Jack has any chance of defeating him.
  • Demongo has killed hundreds of warriors who tried to oppose Aku and enslaved their souls as minions. Although the end of his episode reveals he has little fighting prowess of his own and was dependent on his enslaved minions, he had to have killed at least one of them on his own to start his collection of souls.
• ManBearPig from South Park, proves to be one of the, if not the, most dangerous and unstoppable antagonist in the show. He has massacred numerous people and among his high body count he has killed Kyle Broflovski, one of the main characters (he gets better), nearly kills Ned, a war veteran, and actually kills Satan, described to be one of the most powerful deities in the universe.
• General Grievous from various Star Wars works, mostly in Star Wars: Clone Wars. In his first appearance in the first season finale he takes on five Jedi at once and defeats them with ease and a deadly sense of flair, killing Tarr Seirr, and Sha'a Gi, and putting K'Khruk into a long hibernation in the bout. The interesting thing is that this portrayal was based on an early design for Revenge of the Sith, only for him to be reimagined in the actual film as more of a Smug Snake who defeats minor Jedi but is fully aware that the main characters stand a shot at beating him and resorts to avoiding a fight whenever possible. The second season of Clone Wars tries to bridge the gap by having him take significant injury from a brief confrontation with Mace Windu, virtually a Physical God even among Jedi, and justify his hesitation to fight. Star Wars: The Clone Wars reworks everything, in a Broad Strokes fashion, where he heavily relies on cheap tricks and sending in his bodyguards first to distract and wear them down first. Thus he has the reputation of killing many Jedi and is a high priority target in the war but doesn't quite achieve the position of The Dreaded.
• Star Wars Rebels:
  • The Inquisitorius are a group of Force-sensitives in service of the Empire (and existing outside the Sith Rule of Two) tasked with exterminating any surviving Jedi. As two of the main heroes are Jedi, this organization serves as an antagonistic role during the first two seasons. However, they are nothing when put next to their boss, Darth Vader, who the crew of Ghost absolutely have no hope of defeating.
  • This trope gets deconstructed when Governor Pryce kills Kanan Jarrus in the final season by blowing up an oil refinery sky-high to try to get Phoenix Squadron and Kanan performing a Heroic Sacrifice to prevent the rest of his team from being incinerated as they escaped. Pryce then performs a grand show in the hopes that she will appease her boss, Grand Admiral Thrawn, because with the Emperor's well-known immense hatred for Jedi this should hopefully give her a rep boost. Her boss isn't impressed at all because Thrawn is one of the few people in the Empire that runs on Pragmatic Villainy, and shoots her down by explaining that this little stunt of hers costed the Rebellion one man (a Jedi, sure, but just one man) and what it costed the Empire was an extremely important part of its supply chain for this sector, which means that she pretty much handed it to the Rebellion on a silver platter, before telling Pryce that he's coming to personally punish her for this act of colossal incompetence. The last we see of Pryce that episode is her horrified looks as her mind finally catches up how royally screwed she is.
• The energy monster in Episode 18 of Sym-Bionic Titan qualifies as this. The heroes were completely powerless against it because it was completely impervious to their attacks and could drain the energy out of machines and permanently drain the life out of them so they couldn't be recharged (considering the heroes use robotic battle armor and one is a robot, you can see why this counts). Becomes literal at the end of the episode by killing Octus. It takes the full fire power of the G3's ship and the explosion of the space station it was in to finally destroy it.
• In the 2k3 TMNT, the Shredder is the turtles most feared enemy: he is responsible for murdering Hamato Yoshi (the trainer of the trainer of the turtles), and has never been defeated one-on-one with them. Special mention to the fact that he's actually beaten them on two instances despite them having Splinter with them in the late case because in his new exo-suit he flat out curb stomped them. The demon Shredder that appeared in the lost season also fits, with the Turtles trying to avoid fighting him till they can get more allies to help, and even when they do, and they have Karai draining his strength, it takes Deus ex Machina appearance by Hamato Yoshi's ghost to save them.
• Nox, the Big Bad of Wakfu. His strongest creation, the clockwork monster Razortime, manages to become this trope in one episode. The moment it appears, the heroes realize it's really bad news. All of their efforts are pretty much useless against it and even Rubilax!Grovy is no match for it. Raxortime literally becomes a Hero Killer near the end of the episode by killing Grovy.
• What If…? (2021):
  • In "What If... The World Lost its Mightiest Heroes?", Hank Pym murders all of Fury's candidates for the Avengers Initiative before they're even formed. Having been driven mad with grief after losing his daughter Hope while she was performing a mission for SHIELD, Hank used his Pym Particles to kill each Avenger in order to gain his revenge against Fury.
  • In "What If... Ultron Won?", Ultron... well, wins. After successfully uploading his mind into Vision's body, Ultron proceeds to kill every Avenger (except for Clint and Natasha), kills Thanos, and using the Infinity Stones, wipes out the Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain Marvel, and almost all life in the universe. Once he becomes aware of Uatu, Ultron decides to expand his campaign of genocide across the entire multiverse.
• Jasper in Steven Universe generally fills this role, although given the nature of gems she never technically kills anyone. Still, her first appearance is a Curb-Stomp Battle that ends with all of the protagonists defeated and captured, including The Ace Garnet getting graphically de-fused in a single strike in a cliffhanger that implies she's been killed. Through the entire course of the show only one person is shown to be able to stand toe-to-toe with her without resorting to fusion for assistance, and that's Steven only after he's fully awakened his inherited powers as the fourth diamond.
  • The Diamonds can also be considered this by reputation. Blue is stated to be responsible for countless shatterings over the centuries and Yellow has conquered most of the gem-ruled worlds so both have very large off-screen body counts to their name, in addition to the protagonists being unable to do anything but flee whenever confronted by them until their Heel–Face Turn. Special mention goes to White, who is feared as this even by the other diamonds and effortlessly defeats the entire cast immediately in the climax of their arc. They only survive because Steven is able to talk her down as usual, in a direct confrontation they're all powerless to stop her.
• * Zak Storm: Golden Bones manages to corner and subsequently kill most of the 7C's in one episode with only Zak remaining. However, this is later undone via time travel.

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